warning for some only partially censored language and some pretty mature themes in bullying 

 She had to meet with Alyssa again in the morning. She'd planned on taking Reagan to daycare early and driving herself, but Joel had other plans. He was already ready to go with coffee for both of them in-hand when she came out to leave, and told her he'd drive her... and take care of her brother while she was in the meeting. She insisted he didn't have to until she was blue in the face, but he simply repeated the thing he said to her every time something like this came up.

"I don't want you to be alone."

So he sat in the police station lobby, entertaining Reagan, while Alyssa questioned her further about her parents and her relationship with them. She said whatever she had to, to paint them in the best light possible. It scared her a little how often she found herself lying, but she kept doing it, kept swearing she'd overreacted and nothing was wrong.

She couldn't tell if she had the officer convinced.

But an hour later, she walked out, and couldn't help but admit it was incredibly comforting to have Joel waiting for her, there to squeeze her shoulder and softly encourage her before driving back to the house so she could get her car to go to school.

And it seemed the day might actually go alright... she'd done her best in the interview and no disasters had arisen, Reagan was at daycare, and she was early to school... until, standing at her locker to see if Austin would meet her, she decided to check Instagram.

And found herself tagged in five different photos by the same account she didn't follow or recognize.

sltsofhillsborohigh

Wait... did that mean...

She clicked on the first with a sinking feeling in her chest, and every terrible suspicion was confirmed. She was looking at a cartoon of herself, naked with only the things which would get the post taken down for nudity covered, and covered in ugly burns and cuts. A sign was drawn above her which read Sl*ts Who Self Harm, and one propped in front of her, Adira Rhodes - $15/hr.

The other four tagged posts were variations of the same horrible thing. One advertised her as a B*tch to Beat On, "because mommy and daddy hurt her and she likes it so much she hurts herself".

The account had followed a thousand Hillsboro students already. It had been followed back by seven hundred of them. And while the comments had plenty of, This is disgusting, and Whoever drew this should be expelled, there were also plenty of people without as much respect or decency.

Rhodes really is hot. Too bad she's crazy.

I knew there was something wrong with that *****.

What a freak.

Man, I gotta get me some before they lock her up for being nuts.

Adira pressed her eyes closed and willed herself not to cry even as tears began to slide down her cheeks.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening.

"Addi?" She looked up in panic to see Austin quickly approaching, his brow knit with concern. "Hey, what happened? What's wrong?"

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What was she supposed to say?

As he reached her, his eyes found the phone in her hand.

"Did someone..." He was leaning over her shoulder to look before she could stop him. "Oh my God." He averted his eyes sharply, and she finally powered the screen off and shoved the device into her pocket, still crying too hard to speak.

"Addi..." His voice came out quiet. Full of anger and secondhand pain. "Addi, I'm so sorry. I don't... I don't know who would..."

"Hey, nice abs there, Rhodes!" A senior called as he passed. "I especially like the part where you cut them open!"

Austin lunged in his direction, only stopped from making contact by several of the dude's chuckling friends stepping between them.

"You say another word to her and I swear I'll grind her face into the concrete!" he spat instead.

The senior smirked. "Yeah, you're just mad everyone knows you're sleeping with a psych case."

"Shut up!" He went for him again, but again, his friends made it impossible. "If you don't wanna fight, go!" the boy shouted. "Stop looking at her!"

"Everyone's looking at her, pal," a girl scoffed as she walked by.

Austin's fist connected with a locker with a resounding crash. "Shut up!" He repeated, backing back towards Adira with his arms out to try to shield her from the other students' view. "All of you, shut up!"

Adira just kept her head down and continued to sob.

She had a game that night, and suddenly, her volleyball uniform felt like it might as well be lingerie. She turned back to her locker and fumbled it open, but somehow, she'd never replenished the change of clothes she always tried to keep inside.

Her head dropped against the door in frustration, and it was all she could do not to start beating it against it like she had on Tuesday.

She felt Austin behind her and turned, tugging on his sleeve to ask him to lean down so she could speak softly and he'd still hear it.

"Do you have any sweats?"

He nodded immediate understanding, quickly pulling off his jean jacket and wrapping it around her shoulders, then guiding her, still shielding her as much as possible, to the next hallway, where his locker was located.

The comments just kept coming as they walked. He kept yelling for them to be quiet, and it kept doing zero good.

She knew his combo as well as he did, and he took up station covering her again as she opened the locker and quickly pulled the sweatpants inside over her shorts. They barely clung to her hips, hanging loosely around her legs and feet, but at least she was left with hardly any skin visible.

Just as she was closing Austin's locker, the warning bell began to ring.

Adira pressed her eyes shut once more as she realized she had an entire day of this ahead of her.

"Do you wanna leave?" the boy beside her asked softly with a gentle hand on her shoulder.

As much as she wanted to say yes, to plead with him to take her anywhere but here, she imagined the absence call that would either go to her parents or Joel, the explanations which would follow, and she just couldn't do it.

"I can't."

She felt him nodding. "Okay. Then I'll walk you to class."

Even with his arm around her shoulders, his body continuing to block her from as much visibility as possible, the trek across the school felt ten miles long, with what seemed like ten thousand taunts and catcalls swirling around her every step she took.

When they reached her classroom, it was everything she could do just to keep the strength in her legs.

Both of Austin's arms wrapped around her now, pulling her tight against his chest. "We're gonna deal with this at lunch, okay?" he asked quietly. "I promise."

She just nodded, still not trusting herself to really talk to him.

The one minute bell began to ring, and she quickly pulled away, murmuring, "You're gonna be late."

He just shook his head in a way that said he couldn't care less, but she turned towards the door anyway.

"I'll see you at lunch."

And pushed inside.

Her eyes remained glued to the floor as she walked to her seat. She swore everyone else's were glued to her.

Ella, from her volleyball team, leaned forward from her desk behind Adira's.

"I'm really sorry, Adira," she whispered, and her tone made it clear she really, really was.

Adira just shrugged a little. She still didn't think she could speak.

"Fifteen bucks an hour, huh?" Braden, the boy who sat beside her, hissed. "You know, I got an off during fifth..."

"Shut up, Braden!" Ella snapped. "You're disgusting!"

Adira just looked the other direction and prayed to God to send a lightning bolt from heaven to put her out of her misery.

God didn't comply.

Three miserable periods of biting quips, a few compassionate apologies and defenses, and a lot of staring, later, and she was waiting for Austin outside her third class of the day.

"Rhodes!" She looked up to see Lindsey jogging towards her. "Hey, why aren't you wearing your uniform?"

Adira opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What was she supposed to say?

"She has good reason, Coach." Lily, walking out of their last class behind her, came to her rescue. "Trust me. People are being total ***holes."

"Oh, okay..." Concern immediately etched the woman's face. "Everything okay?"

"It's fine," Adira managed to choke out. "I'll handle it."

"Kay, well, you come grab me if you change your mind, got it?"

Adira nodded, and the coach reluctantly walked away.

"Thanks," she managed in Lily's direction.

"Yeah, of course," the other girl replied quickly. "I... I'm really sorry, Adira. They're all pigs."

Adira just nodded a little, unable to look her teammate in the face. "See you tonight."

"Yeah. See you then."

She felt Austin's arm wrapping around her shoulders before she turned to see him standing there, immediately melting into the comfort of his body next to hers.

"Hey, Hot Stuff," he said softly. "How we holding up?"

"Okay," she whispered.

He nodded a little. "You ready to go to the office?"

"Do we have to?"

"Yeah." The word was gentle, apologetic for what she was going through, but certain, firm.

"Then I guess so," she sighed dejectedly.

When had a good kid like her gotten to be such good buddies with that front office?

The taunting had only increased as more and more people had discovered the account and its cartoons.

"That fifteen bucks an hour sure adds up, huh, Levy?"

"***** who self harm, huh, Rhodes?"

"Always knew you were a freak, but ****, Adira, that's messed up."

"Get some help, *****!"

"I'll come to your game tonight if you shave a few bucks off your rate afterwards, Rhodes."

It was clear by the way he held her tighter with every comment that Austin was barely holding himself back from dropping the gloves with every single one of them.

Finally, they made it to the office, Austin marching straight to one of the deans' open doors and knocking on the frame.

The man inside looked up and beckoned them in with a movement of his head. "Hey, guys," he greeted them, looking them up and down like he was trying to figure out what they'd done to get sent here. "What's going on?"

"We need to talk to you," Austin stated matter-of-factly.

The dean, Mr. Tedder according to his door, nodded a little. "Alright. Yeah, of course. Sit down."

Austin closed to door behind them and pulled out a chair for Adira before claiming his own. Then, he pulled out his phone, opened Instagram, and navigated to Adira's profile and tagged posts. He still deliberately averted his eyes as he pulled up one of the cartoons and shoved it across the desk to the man on the other side.

Adira could feel her cheeks burning as the dean hesitantly reached out and picked up the device to inspect the image displayed on the screen. When he did, horror washed over his face as he too quickly looked away. He set the phone down somberly.

"There's five of them," Austin said, his voice raw with anger at the situation.

"And you're Adira?" Tedder asked quietly.

She nodded.

"Okay." He exhaled slowly. "First of all, I'm so, so sorry. I promise we're gonna do everything we can to get those taken down and deal with the people responsible, okay?"

She nodded again.

"Okay." He took a deep breath. "What's your last name?"

"Rhodes," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"So Mr. Ellis is your counselor?"

A third nod. Here it came. Again.

"Okay. I'm gonna go grab him and one of our assistant principals, okay? You two sit tight, I'll be right back."

He returned a minute later with Mr. Ellis and Ms. Fible, an assistant principal, behind him. Ellis offered his sad, desperate apologies to her. Ms. Fible took a look at the posts, then pulled them up on her laptop so she could make record of them. They said since it was an anonymous account, they couldn't be sure that they'd be able to find out who was behind it, but they would do everything they could. Austin asked about the people commenting. They said they'd discipline anyone who said anything worthy of discipline, and as soon as they had screenshots of everything for proof, they'd report the account and make sure they were taken down. They all apologized again. Ellis offered to excuse her from the rest of her classes, but she refused, the bell rang, and Austin walked her to history.

She prayed some more for that lightning bolt as she slunk inside. God still seemed to be saying no.

She didn't look at anyone as she made her way to her seat. There was a mix of lust, judgement, and pity in the gazes, but she swore every eye was locked on her. With a teacher like Rolys, though, no one was brave enough to say anything.

That was, until they were separated into groups and he was on the opposite side of the room. Then, as Adira dug out her laptop, still not looking anyone in the face, Devin, a member of the other mock trial team, sidled over and leaned on the table she was seated at.

"So... uh... about that fifteen bucks for an hour..."

Jenna and Kyle snickered. Macy, Liz, and Sara all looked up in anger. But it was James who was on his feet, stepping aggressively in between Adira and Devin.

"Hey, you wanna shut up?"

"Whoa, Bro, it's just a joke!" Devin protested, taking a step back and looking around, uncomfortable at the attention that was suddenly on the two of them and off of Adira.

"Yeah, well it's not funny!" James snapped. "Does it look like she's laughing? Those posts were ******* disgusting, and so are you!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, boys!" Rolys was across the room and between them in just a few steps. "What's going on over here?"

"He's a ******* pervert, Rolys!" James exclaimed, his face still red with anger.

"Hey, it's not my fault your friend's a ******* ****!" Devin retorted, and James lunged forward again, only to be stopped by Rolys.

"Okay, okay!" The teacher held up both hands to halt the arguing. "First of all, that," he pointed at Devin. "Is not a word we ever use in this classroom, especially not about other students."

"But he called me a..."

He cut the boy off. "And we're taking this into the hall so everyone else can get to work."

Adira watched them go with guilt twisting her stomach at the fact that now James was in trouble on her behalf.

Lightning. It would do literally everyone a favor if a bolt of lightning just...

"I'm really sorry, Adira," Macy said softly as the door closed behind the three of them. "All of that is so disgusting."

She just shrugged a little, eyes on her laptop screen. "It's fine. Let's just get to work on our questions."

Five minutes later, Rolys and James walked back into the room. Devin didn't.

The look on Rolys's face was a mix of sick, angry, and extremely sad.

"Sorry," she murmured to James as he sat down next to her once more.

He shook his head a little. "People ******* suck."

She couldn't do anything but silently agree with that.

I just cannot give that girl a break. What do you think Joel is gonna do when he finds out about this? What about Austin, now that people are publicly talking about Adira self-harming? Please drop a comment and singlehandedly bring back my will to live. Love y'all. 

- Line <3